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Top bar hive top bar supplier?

I have seen the beveled topbars on the net but for some reason the people selling them are anti lang and make them shorter than 19 inches on purpose so lang frames dont fit. We bought a top bar hive that takes a 19 inch top bar, we dont have a table saw to make our own. Does anyone sell beveled top bars 19 inches long? I also want to use them in nucs to form comb and then put in the top bar hive, it would be great to have them interchangable. Regular Lang tops dont seem to be wide enough to allow for bee space, I could just glue the bottom to the side but them I am creating nice places for SHB to hide.

Re: Top bar hive top bar supplier?

I believe most plans for TBH call for a 17" top bar. I may be wrong. That's probably why you can't find many suppliers.
Of course the 17" top bars fit PERFECTLY into a lang frame! lol
Real convenient when "borrowing" brood to a lang.

Re: Top bar hive top bar supplier?

They draw out on our 19 inch bars perfectly, I would think that the little bit extra comb and the ability to interchange would have been good ideas, make it easier for people to adapt lang to top bars might have been a good idea and get more people to try them. WVMJ

Re: Top bar hive top bar supplier?

Perhaps you could find a neighbor with a table-saw, or even rent one for a day at a Home Depot or somesuch. (Portable saws used by contractors for that matter aren't that expensive ...) We made many dozens of bars in just a couple of hours:

Cut to length.

Rip to width.

Run a shallow kerf-line down the middle (so a popsicle-stick sits about halfway in).

Run a perpendicular shallow kerf-line on one end at the place where the bar would normally sit on the edge of the side-panel, so that the bar naturally "clicks" into place and tends to remain properly perpendicular until the bees glue it down. (This last bit was our improvement. Putting a kerf at both ends isn't necessary.)

As you can see we used popsicle-sticks wood-glued into the slot as our guide, and kept the carpentry as simple as we could figure out to make it.

Re: Top bar hive top bar supplier?

Originally Posted by mrobinson

Perhaps you could find a neighbor with a table-saw, or even rent one for a day at a Home Depot or somesuch. (Portable saws used by contractors for that matter aren't that expensive ...) We made many dozens of bars in just a couple of hours:

Cut to length.

Rip to width.

Run a shallow kerf-line down the middle (so a popsicle-stick sits about halfway in).

Run a perpendicular shallow kerf-line on one end at the place where the bar would normally sit on the edge of the side-panel, so that the bar naturally "clicks" into place and tends to remain properly perpendicular until the bees glue it down. (This last bit was our improvement. Putting a kerf at both ends isn't necessary.)

As you can see we used popsicle-sticks wood-glued into the slot as our guide, and kept the carpentry as simple as we could figure out to make it.

Home Depot sells 8' 1" x 2" boards that are actually 3/4 x 1 1/2, the size you need for honey after you cut them to the length you want. You will also want bars for brood, so you cut a 1/8 inch strip off the 1 x 2 and you end up with a board that's between 1 1/4 and 1 3/8 depending on the width of the saw blade. That 1/8 x 1 1/2 inch strip can be cut in half (1/8 x 3/4 inch wide) and used instead of the "popsicle stick" after you make the "kerf line" mentioned in the post above.

Re: Top bar hive top bar supplier?

THanks for the helpful DIY tips, I like my fingers, getting stung is enough of a sacrafice to the bees for me. Already have a voulunteer to craft them for me, cant wait till they get here. Our bees build on the flat spots of the bars like in honey bee habitat, I think using the beveled bars might encourage them to stop doing that so much. WVMJ

Re: Top bar hive top bar supplier?

Here's a link from our website that I found online on how to make a nice beveled edge. If you decide to use it, contact me. There is a minor modification required. I made a couple hundred in an afternoon using scrap 2X material I picked up at residential construction sites.

Re: Top bar hive top bar supplier?

I am a woodworker and can make whatever you need .
The angled bottoms work very good. My first TBH has angled bars but the second has a spline hanging down...My results are better with the angled ones. No crooked combs in first hive but second hive(which is from a recent split) I have two of three new combs that are little askew.
I live in NC, so if I am close enough let me know.